He assimilated as soon as he walked into the station and began stalking and plotting against Nelle, and conspiring with Sonny's son to illegally entrap her. I assume that once he succeeds, he will be on Sonny's payroll. So predictable.

But Sonny did just threaten to kill him which gives me hope that he won’t become another Sonny sycophant.

@kathykato said:

He assimilated as soon as he walked into the station and began stalking and plotting against Nelle, and conspiring with Sonny's son to illegally entrap her. I assume that once he succeeds, he will be on Sonny's payroll. So predictable.

Poor innocent Nelle. No other mortal could have survived what she went through because of Carly's whackjob family...

No one thinks Nelle is poor or innocent. That doesn't justify Chase's actions, he's still a corrupt cop with an agenda of his own.

@kathykato said:

No one thinks Nelle is poor or innocent. That doesn't justify Chase's actions, he's still a corrupt cop with an agenda of his own.

However, in this case, he actually was justified in what he did. Chase saw Franco on the ground unconscious and Valentin standing over him holding a broken bottle, it may be completely innocent, but it looks incredibly suspicious. While that isn't proof that Valentin did it, Chase was justified in asking Valentin to come in for questioning.

I'm currently re-watching NYPD Blue on Hulu, and so right now my standard for proper police procedure is 'would Detective Sipowicz and Simone' (or Sipowicz and Kelly or Sipowicz and Sorenson or Sipowicz and Clark) bring that guy in for questioning if they were in Chase's shoes? The answer, in this case, is, 'hell yes'.

Although in this instance Sipowicz and Simone would have done it differently, if the guy holding the broken bottle had asked 'am I suspect?' they would have answered 'maybe, maybe not, but let's talk about that down at the station house and tell us your side of the story' and then Sipowicz and Simone would have gotten aggressive only if the guy indicated that he would not go, Sipowicz would say something like 'look, you can come with voluntarily or we can slap the cuffs on you and humiliate you in front of your friends (or family or coworkers or whoever is watching the scene) which would you prefer?' and 90% of the time the guy says 'okay, I'll come in voluntarily.'

But that's the difference between competent cops produced by a former police detective (Bill Clark, a producer for NYPD Blue was a New York police detective for over 20 years) and a soap written by two people whose only contact with cops might be getting pulled over while speeding or running a red light.

Unfortunately, cop shows sanitize 95% of the crooked things cops do. Serpico- film and man- was where it's at, and, unfortunately, still is, be it a big city copper or a countryside bubba. I used to work in a court and on lunch heard these two bailiffs, who used to be beat cops, laughing about pulling people over and harassing them, just to be dicks.

@cosmoeticadotcom said:

Unfortunately, cop shows sanitize 95% of the crooked things cops do. Serpico- film and man- was where it's at, and, unfortunately, still is, be it a big city copper or a countryside bubba. I used to work in a court and on lunch heard these two bailiffs, who used to be beat cops, laughing about pulling people over and harassing them, just to be dicks.

And that's what was great about NYPD Blue, the cops were not clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, they lied on the witness stand when they knew they could get away with it, sometimes they used excessive force, one of the main characters (Dennis Franz's Sipowicz) was openly racist and frequently employed racial epithets in casual conversation (e.g. calling Arabs 'towelheads' and referring to the gay character as 'gay John' and sometimes as 'that fruit' or 'that fairy') and he feuded with his black boss and the issue of his racism did affect his police work at times.

People talk about how NYPD Blue 'shattered taboos' or sex or nudity or profanity in prime time TV, and it did that, but the REAL taboo it broke that is almost never mentioned is that it broke the taboo against showing cops beating a suspect until he confessed. Not only do we see this happens more than once, but the cops speak about it casually referring to it as 'giving the suspect a tune-up' and they talk about how to beat up a suspect so as to not leave any cuts or bruises so that there won't be evidence if he should complain, they even draw a distinction between a 'tune-up' (i.e. a light beating) and what they call 'beating his balls off', which, I guess really should be self-explanatory They show the cops doing illegal searches and seizures (and then show them conspiring to cover it up) and there is even one scene where a detective condescendingly tells a beat cop that 'when you're older and wiser you'll understand that you can't always do everything by the book, you have to bend the rules.'

No other cop show before or since was ever so willing to show the dark side of police work, while still maintaining a generally 'pro-police' position most of the time.

I wasn't commenting about Chase being corrupt in the particular case of taking Valentin in for questioning. I think he has shown himself to be corrupt in the way he has stalked and pursued Nelle from a personal sgenda, and now he is in entrapping her. He will most certainly be in Sonny's back pocket if he is successful in his ruse against Nelle. And so the corruption of the PC department will continue on, same corruption, different characters.

@cosmoeticadotcom said:

Unfortunately, cop shows sanitize 95% of the crooked things cops do. Serpico- film and man- was where it's at, and, unfortunately, still is, be it a big city copper or a countryside bubba. I used to work in a court and on lunch heard these two bailiffs, who used to be beat cops, laughing about pulling people over and harassing them, just to be dicks.

Those ads for Nathan Fillion's new cop show this fall has me interested bc we are close in age and I need to make a change in my life too like his character. I've always hated network shows, IMO pay channels offer superior programs like Billions on showtime.

@kathykato said:

I wasn't commenting about Chase being corrupt in the particular case of taking Valentin in for questioning. I think he has shown himself to be corrupt in the way he has stalked and pursued Nelle from a personal agenda, and now he is in entrapping her. He will most certainly be in Sonny's back pocket if he is successful in his ruse against Nelle. And so the corruption of the PC department will continue on, same corruption, different characters.

No, what he is doing isn't entrapment. Entrapment is when a police officer uses some form of coercion to try to induce someone to commit a crime he would not otherwise commit, in other words, entrapment is when the only reason a crime happens at all is that the police are there, in essence, the police create the crime.

However, if the police set up a situation where a known criminal has committed crimes in the past, and make it appear that he can do it again without getting caught, and he does it, that isn't entrapment.

The standard, to determine what is, and is not entrapment, is whether an innocent person is likely to be ensnared. If the police just set up a scenario where a crime is possible, but there is nothing forcing the criminal to commit it except his own desire to do so, that is not something that is going to snare an innocent person.

For example, the police could park a brand new Camero on the street with doors unlocked to catch a known car thief, that is not a trap that is likely to snare an innocent person. No innocent person, who has never before stolen a car, is going to try to steal that one, he may walk by, notice the car with the doors unlocked, but the won't be tempted to steal it, only a car thief would do that. This is essentially what Chase is doing to Nelle, he is not trying to force her to do anything, he is simply setting up a scenario, similar to the car with unlocked doors, where no one is likely to commit a crime except the criminally minded. You could put 1,000 different girls into the same jam that Nelle now finds herself in and at least 999 of them would never even so much as contemplate the idea of committing murder as the way out of it. I mean, you've probably found yourself in your own life in the same kind of situations that have driven other people to murder and I bet the idea 'hey if I just kill this guy, problem solved' never even entered your mind at any point in your decision-making process.

You don't have a problem with Chase coming to PC for the sole purpose of trying to arrest Nelle, even though she had been acquitted of any wrong doing? And do you deny the fact that if he is successful in working with Michael to trap her, that Sonny will ingratiate himself to Chase? Like I said, same old story, different characters.

@kathykato said:

You don't have a problem with Chase coming to PC for the sole purpose of trying to arrest Nelle, even though she had been acquitted of any wrong doing?

Of course I do, I've said so numerous times, but Michael and Chase's plan isn't 'entrapment'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

I'd say it's borderline. If there was evidence that Chase screwed up in the earlier case, well, then it mitigates entrapment, and Michael is a decoy, not a piece of entrapment. But, if say, they left around knives and poison and things so easily for Nell to use, THEN that us def entrapment.

I think Chase is blinded by the fact that Nelle derailed his career, which really was his own fault. He hasn’t even considered other potential suspects in Zak’s death, like the sister

@cosmoeticadotcom said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

OMG. Is Cosmo using wiki as a reference?!!

I'd say it's borderline. If there was evidence that Chase screwed up in the earlier case, well, then it mitigates entrapment, and Michael is a decoy, not a piece of entrapment. But, if say, they left around knives and poison and things so easily for Nell to use, THEN that us def entrapment.

I would say it's questionable, and could be challenged by a competent attorney. Chase's involvement muddies the water. And while no one is coercing Nelle to commit a crime, they are certainly goading her and creating an environment leading to her committing a crime. If Chase utters one word that implicitly suggests she should kill Michael then it's all for nothing. They're playing it a little close.